Often created by sad bastards who have nothing better to do with their lives, chain letters usually threaten to do horrible things to you if you don't re-send them to x amount of people within x minutes of receiving them. If you follow the instructions within the given chain letter, then a myriad of wonderful things will happen to you. In order to convince the recipient of the chain letter's power, they commonly incorporate the phrase: "Dis iz so scari cos it actualli werks," or something along those lines. (It may be worth noting, however, that the majority of chain letters' origins lie with illiterates, so they seldom have any grammatical value and can prove very difficult to understand.) Inevitably, the other sad bastards who receive the chain letter believe this crap, and re-send it to all their friends...that is, if they have any...

An 'Illiterate-speak to English' translated chain letter:

"You will have the best day of your entire existence tomorrow if you send this to 1241234234.9238429387423 x 10³ and a half other people within the next 3.3482349872 recurring minutes. Then press F4, F6; hold down Num Lock with your left testicle; press alt three times, with tenuto on the last tap; hit Caps Lock with staccato, with a time signature of 6/8 for the first two bars, then 16/12 for the remaining bars; press Esc. to the rhythm of 'Silent Night'; play the bassline from Beethoven's 5th Symphony in the key of Ab major on the wire of your mouse, with pizzicato throughout; stand on your nose and recite pi in binary. Then, your name, but in Icelandic, will appear on the screen in the font 'Comic Sans'. This is quite frightening because it actually works. If you don't resend this then your Maths teacher will sneak into your room at 12.03 tonight whilst you are asleep and stick photographs of his phallus over your eyes with superglue, so that will be the first thing you see when you awaken in the morning. If you are still awake at 12.03, then he will come out from underneath your bed, chop you up into cubic centimetres and then put you into his geometry set with some kangaroo crap that he measured earlier. Then, you'll get AIDS from a rabid dog that's addicted to crack - who actually mistook you for a schizophrenic next door neighbour - and die from leprosy because Mahatma Gandhi teleported you to Iraq; then to the Vietnam War, which was, incidentally, where Saddam Hussein was having a homosexual encounter with Bin Laden, and George Bush was co-existing with fish and putting food on Al-Qaeda's families (and genitals). When you're dead, a random Goth will tear himself away from his BDSM orgy that he was engaged in with an array of farmyard animals and come to your funeral in his hearse. Here, he will shit on your grave: 'Uhh, that's better!'"

forwarded e-mail which threatens to ruin yor sex life unless you send it to 20 people within 5 minutes of receiving it.

OMG guys, Jesus wrote this chain letter 2000 years ago despite the fact of not having a computer and if you dont send it to 80 friends within the next hour in order to save a starving ugandan orphan with syphilis he will zap your testicles off!

A letter, often containing a story, that promises something good if sent to x people (or in the case of MySpace, reposted) in y minutes, and often comes with a consequence if not reposted.

These are very popular on MySpace, and in some cases chain letters threaten account deletion if not reposted. They are very annoying and clutter up the bulletins.

These letters are NOT TRUE. Trust me; I've ignored various chain letters with something along the lines of "repost or you will die" and I'm still alive and well. If I do die, it will have nothing to do with a chain letter.

<Random person A> I got one of those chain letters. If I don't repost this by midnight tonight then I apparantly will be killed off by a ghost. What do I do?
<Random person B> Ignore it. Whoever made that is trying to clutter up e-mail servers.

A piece of superstitious text that is more like bullshit than bullshit itself. People who believe in Chain Letters are either very religious or very superstitious. (Seriously, these FuckHeads have no fricken lives!)

Chain Letter - "Send this letter around to 50 people and you will be kissed by the love of your life tomorrow! If you don't a man will appear by your bed tonight and slit your throat" What a load of Crap!

a form of demoralization by recieving a letter that must be sent to many friends in order to have good luck. people will customarily test this theory, by trying to send it to their friends, then finding out they don't have any.

Most of these start out with a short story,
(Translated from illiteracy)
In 1964(or some shit like that) a girl named (Insert WTF?! Name Here) was (insert deus ex machina here) by (Another WTF?! name) while she was (doing something).

Then do a repost or die.

If you don't send this to (variable) people in (time period), she will kill you with (whatever). If you do, you will be awarded.

These are most common on MySpace because of it's unmoderated bullshit.

In 1829, a gurl namd Haraballius wus wlking on a lke when a man named Tradadallah W.T. Fuck raped her to death. If you dont sent dis chain letter 2 38 ppl by the end of 1408, u will b killd by Haraballius. if u do, u willb re-wrded with coton candee reign.

A very stupid thing which demented sadists write for their own amusement. Appears in the form of an email, "real" letter, or Youtube comment. Usually goes something like this:

Ef u dn't snd this lettr to 20 mor pple then you'r (mom will die/ balls will be cut off/ you will turn gay) at mdnite tonite LOL ROFL!!!!!

Only horribly stupid people follow these, while intelligent people ignore them. Really intelligent people track down the people who right the letters and kill these people with a lawnmower and a pogo stick.

Stupid person: "Oh no's! I just read a chain letter in me email and if me doesn't copy it an' send it to twenty other extremely stupid people, then my mommy will go bye-bye!"
Smart person: "You are a very stupid person."
Stupid person: (Glues foot to forehead) "What?"